‘Economy crumbling, dissenting voices silenced’: Aakar Patel

Author Aakar Patel has described the economic policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government as illogical. 

Speaking at a session at the MBIFL on Friday, he alleged that there was a calculated attempt to silence critics and isolate minorities.

“It should be noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faced pushback from civil society. He was forced to apologise for the farm laws. The government enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019 but failed to implement it even after three years. Minorities were on the streets protesting against the CAA. The judiciary is at loggerheads with the Centre on certain issues. Opposition parties have rallied together and the loss of power in Bihar had given the sense that somebody can’t hold North India for long,” he said.

He observed that the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, formed in 1951, didn’t have an economic ideology for decades. “When AB Vajpayee became the President in 1971, the Jana Sangh resolved to limit the maximum income of all citizens to Rs 2,000 per month and the minimum to Rs 100, maintaining a 20:1 ratio. They also insisted that residential houses in cities would be on plots that did not exceed 1,000 square yards. They felt that the introduction of machinery will lead to job loss.”

He said that the International Monetary Fund’s latest data showed that Bangladesh had outpaced India on per capita income. “India’s labour force participation rate has fallen to 40 per cent. The unemployment rate is the lowest since 2019,” he added.